The Greene Countrie Towne Festival held in Greenfield over the weekend was so successful, Greenfield Rotary Club President Andrew Surritt said Monday, that he is already planning an even bigger and better festival next year.
“Just from listening to everybody talk, it was probably the best festival in a long time,” Surritt said. “I think it was the great weather and changing up how we do our entertainment a little. While we stayed with a little local entertainment during the day, we went outside the community for our headline performances each night and both nights we got a good reaction from the crowd.”
The biggest crowd, Surritt said, turned out Saturday to see the Absolute Journey Tribute, which Surritt earlier described as the No. 1 international Journey tribute band.
“The weather was great, the crowd was large as expected, and from some aerial photography we had done we’re guessing we had about 12,000 people total all three days,” Surritt said. “Saturday was huge. The Journey band drew quite the crowd.”
Surritt said final figures were not yet in for the annual Rotary Auction held Saturday afternoon, but he said preliminary figures are looking like it raised $20,000 plus. He said that fell short of the $30,000 goal the Rotary had set, but is more than the auction raised the last couple years.
The auction is the primary annual fundraiser for all the projects the Rotary Club undertakes each year.
The main money producer during the auction is the sale of 10 prints of a drawing by local artist Tammy Wells. The drawing this year celebrated the 50th anniversary of an antique and classic car show that gave the festival its start. Surritt said that Greenfield business Wooden It Be Nice purchased one of the prints for $1,250, then donated it back to the auction where it sold for another $1,300 to $1,400.
Surritt said that increasing the number of food vendors by about double also seemed to work out well.
“A couple of them came here from the Festival of the Bells and said they made more money in Greenfield than at the Festival of the Bells,” Surritt said.
Next year’s festival is scheduled for July 20-22 and Surritt said he has already started planning for it, scheduling several vendors already. He said he plans to have even more vendors next year along with more rides.
“We’re just looking forward to seeing everyone next year,” Surritt said. “We will be expanding our footprint and we actually started working on that Sunday morning.”
Reach Jeff Gilliland at 937-402-2522 or [email protected].
